The Navy's highly secretive scheme to redevelop the most valuable piece of public land in San Diego – 16 expansive acres at Broadway and Harbor Drive – presents an urgent challenge to Mayor Jerry Sanders and the City Council. Without prompt intervention by the city, the Navy will press ahead aggressively with plans to build a massive high-rise office complex and thereby destroy a magnificent waterfront parcel – a site that rightly is called the “front porch” of San Diego.

Do the math: An estimated 936,675 adults in the city of San Diego and 96,713 youth aged 12-17; a San Diego County smoking rate of 15.1 percent; an average number of cigarettes smoked per day of 14.1 for adults and 7 for those under 18. The total: 2,096,500 cigarettes smoked in San Diego every day. Countywide, the figure is nearly 5 million.

As the riots spread through the Islamic world, the British Foreign Secretary, the U.S. State Department, the United Nations Secretary General, various responsible Muslim organizations, many commentators in Europe and the United States, including some distinguished conservative commentators, are calling for restraint on both sides.

When historians look back on our present time, there's a good chance they will judge President Bush and the current generation of lawmakers by the adequacy of their response to the two overriding challenges facing America today.

No sooner had I written recently that I was frustrated with President Bush's hardheadedness, muddled messages and refusal to learn from mistakes than I got a letter from a reader who asked whether – with the benefit of hindsight – I would change my support for Bush.